Do you think Star Trek needed a reboot?

[nightwind1]

DalekJim wrote:

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TNG was a huge phenomenon. Somebody had to think so if it got 4 Hollywood movies based on it.

As opposed to TOS, which got 9 movies and 5 television series based on it.

[BillJ]

DalekJim wrote:

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Well, I've never been cool and I think Star Trek should be more than a nostalgia piece for a 60s action show.

I'm serious in the question I'm asking: why? Why does it need to be more than that? Why does it need to be anything more than a fun romp?

[DalekJim]

BillJ wrote:

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I'm serious in the question I'm asking: why? Why does it need to be more than that? Why does it need to be anything more than a fun romp?

Well, I prefer Star Trek when it makes me think. Just my own personal taste. I know there are fans that prefer it when it is frothy action-adventure but I'm not one of them. Any show could do that kind of stuff.

nightwind1 wrote:

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As opposed to TOS, which got 9 movies and 5 television series based on it.

Wrong. The 4 TNG movies, DS9, VOY and ENT are all due to the success of TNG. DS9 is obviously a TNG spin-off.

[BillJ]

DalekJim wrote:

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If I were in charge I'd have had a new crew and new ship. Having an interesting story is way more important than cosy nostalgia for misty-eyed 40+ year olds.

I went and saw the film twice opening weekend, there were more people there that were my daughters age (including my daughter) than people my age.

[BillJ]

DalekJim wrote:

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Well, I prefer Star Trek when it makes me think. Just my own personal taste. I know there are fans that prefer it when it is frothy action-adventure but I'm not one of them. Any show could do that kind of stuff.

Why must it be one or the other? I believe it was that type of thinking that sunk Modern Trek to begin with. It quit being fun.

[DalekJim]

BillJ wrote:

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Why must it be one or the other? I believe it was that type of thinking that sunk Modern Trek to begin with. It quit being fun.

I find thinking fun, but that's beside the point.

I also like the final 2 seasons of ENT, despite the fucking jizz covered shit that was the finale.

[LOKAI of CHERON]

Just thought I'd chip in on the idea TNG is somehow more popular in the UK as postulated in this thread. Having lived here all my life, I couldn't disagree more. IMHO, TOS occupies exactly the same awareness/penetration in UK popular culture as US posters have alluded to in their country.

[BillJ]

DalekJim wrote:

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I find thinking fun, but that's beside the point.

I've got twenty plus seasons of Trek on DVD and all the movies...

But you have to have diversity in storytelling or else people will simply leave and move on to other things. Which is exactly what happened to Star Trek, they got into a happy little rut and refused to experiment within the format. The Powers That Be bought into the hype that Trek was suppose to be making social statements first and be entertainment second and by the time they it figured out people were no longer interested, it was simply too late.

For me, Star Trek became a chore near the end. I bought movie tickets and watched on TV simply because it was what I had done for twenty years straight. I wasn't there because it was compelling TV, I was there because I had always been there. I was going through the motions.

I think there are a world of flaws in Star Trek 2009 (as anyone here can tell you ) but it's also the most fun I had had with Trek since midway through TNG's run...

[King Daniel]

DalekJim wrote:

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If a new crew could take off and be a phenomenon in their own right then it could happen again. There are a whole generation of Trek fans who don't give a fuck about Kirk and Spock, yet could give you all the specs of the Enterprise-D.

I think you'll find those tech-heads who could give you the E-D's specs are a fringe element of a fringe fandom. That's why they stopped doing technical manuals in the mid-90's.

If I were in charge I'd have had a new crew and new ship. Having an interesting story is way more important than cosy nostalgia for misty-eyed 40+ year olds.

New ship/crew has been done again and again, no doubt Rick Berman told the studio he could capture TNG's lightning in a bottle again - but you've already seen the ratings charts, the generic setting of Trek with a new ship/crew is no longer profitable. The Next Gen characters were no longer profitable when Nemesis came along. The plans for the animated series Star Trek: Final Frontier (another new ship/new crew a few hundred years after TNG) quietly died.

And suggesting nuTrek is just "cosy nostalgia for misty-eyed 40-year-olds" is facepalm-worthy. Especially since I believe it was you complaining about the NOT YOUR FATHER'S STAR TREK advertising slogan earlier in this thread?

[Nerys Myk]

DalekJim wrote:

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Picard is bigger than Kirk with the younger generation. The generation that the Abrams film is clearly aimed at.

You mean the generation that helped made Abrams' film a hit and never once thought "where's Picard?"

DalekJim wrote:

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TNG S1 is obviously shit but S3-S5 perfects the formula started by TOS as far as I'm concerned. Then DS9 took things even further and became the best Trek.

When you say stuff like this it hard to take you seriously. You come across as a petulant child who can't get his way.

Star Trek is moving forward. Using the TOS characters does not equal a step backwards.

DalekJim wrote:

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No, but they have eaten up JJ Abrams' bullshit about Star Trek only connecting with audiences when it had Kirk and Spock in it. A poster even went on to call the 25 seasons of modern Trek an unsuccessful disaster.

If a new crew could take off and be a phenomenon in their own right then it could happen again. There are a whole generation of Trek fans who don't give a fuck about Kirk and Spock, yet could give you all the specs of the Enterprise-D.

If I were in charge I'd have had a new crew and new ship. Having an interesting story is way more important than cosy nostalgia for misty-eyed 40+ year olds.

Now you come across as a petulant child with a potty mouth. I don't think Abrams has ever said anything about "Star Trek only connecting with audiences when it had Kirk and Spock". I think it was the studio who decided to use Kirk and Spock, so those were the cards Abrams was dealt.

The movie was a big hit, so a large portion of the "whole generation of Trek fans who don't give a fuck about Kirk and Spock, yet could give you all the specs of the Enterprise-D" must have bought tickets. Probably more than the number of "misty-eyed 40+ year olds who saw it". The generational divide you're trying to promote just doesn't fly. The movie success it due to it appealing to a wide. That means people who grew up with TNG, 40+ TOS fans and people with only a vague idea of what Star Trek is.

[BillJ]

Nerys Myk wrote:

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The movie was a big hit, so a large portion of the "whole generation of Trek fans who don't give a fuck about Kirk and Spock, yet could give you all the specs of the Enterprise-D" must have bought tickets.

Including DalekJim.

[Hartzilla2007]

Jackson_Roykirk wrote:

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In the U.S., Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock are pop culture icons. Jean-Luc Picard is not.
The common average NON-Star Trek fan American (some of whom are people who never watched any Star Trek of any kind in their lives) have mostly heard of Kirk and Spock, but not Picard.

My childhood leads me to agree with this point as any time a cartoon addressed Star Trek for the most part it was TOS based. TNG may have gotten a few but that was it and one time they actually felt the need to explain TNG to the audience whereas with TOS they never felt the need to do that.

[Dale Sams]

"Let's not fight about who killed who..."

[Admiral Buzzkill]

LOKAI of CHERON wrote:

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Just thought I'd chip in on the idea TNG is somehow more popular in the UK as postulated in this thread. Having lived here all my life, I couldn't disagree more. IMHO, TOS occupies exactly the same awareness/penetration in UK popular culture as US posters have alluded to in their country.

Of course that's true.

TOS is the core of Star Trek, and the Franchise will always return to those characters and that setting.

That's just the truth. It's the way that it is. There is no more "forward evolution" going on than with Sherlock Holmes, just variation for the sake of attracting the attention of each new generation through novelty.

There have been an awful lot of Frankenstein and Dracula movies made over the last century. A lot of sequels, reworkings, shifts in characters and setting and formula have been done, and depending on the intent and skills and resources of the film makers those movies have ranged from brilliant to unwatchable to just silly and fun.

Somehow, at the end of the day they always come back around to Doctor Frankenstein stitching together corpses in his laboratory and the Count setting out for England from his family home in Transylvania, both in some earlier time than ours.

[Crazy Eddie]

Awesome Possum wrote:

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Nemesis and fun should never be associated with each other.

Don't be a hater.

Nemesis was eighty minutes of foreplay with a space battle at the end of it. Which is a respectable thing to do in a sci-fi movie, except in this case the leadup phase was strange and uninteresting. The space battle WAS good, but nothing else before it was.

My Name Is Legion wrote:

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Of course that's true.

TOS is the core of Star Trek, and the Franchise will always return to those characters and that setting.

That's just the truth. It's the way that it is. There is no more "forward evolution" going on than with Sherlock Holmes, just variation for the sake of attracting the attention of each new generation through novelty.

There have been an awful lot of Frankenstein and Dracula movies made over the last century. A lot of sequels, reworkings, shifts in characters and setting and formula have been done, and depending on the intent and skills and resources of the film makers those movies have ranged from brilliant to unwatchable to just silly and fun.

Somehow, at the end of the day they always come back around to Doctor Frankenstein stitching together corpses in his laboratory and the Count setting out for England from his family home in Transylvania, both in some earlier time than ours.

But that of course sets up the question of whether or not the spinoffs are worthy of a reboot in the future as well, or if the new continuity will spawn a whole new series of 23rd century spinoffs.

After all, if Star Trek has become a piece of cinematic folklore on par with Dracula and Frankenstein -- and I am hardly arguing that it hasn't -- then those derivative works (Bride of Frankenstein or Nosferatu) might be worth revisiting too, either in the context of the rebooted paradigm or as independent reboots with their own continuity. Either way, it's interesting that for a fictional universe as well-developed as Star Trek, the actual TOS universe is the least sophisticated and the most poorly understood aspect of it. There's ALOT of room for expansion there, reboot or not.